The Pope on gay children: "Things can be done through psychiatry"
"When this manifests itself in childhood, there are many things that can be done through psychiatry," Jorge Bergoglio said yesterday at a press conference from his plane. This time he was returning from Ireland, where Prime Minister Leo Varadkar—openly gay—questioned him about the sexual abuse of children by priests and nuns in the Catholic Church.
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“When this manifests itself in childhood, there are many things that can be done through psychiatry,” Jorge Bergoglio said yesterday at a press conference from his plane. This time he was returning from Ireland, where Prime Minister Leo Varadkar—openly gay—challenged him about the sexual abuse of children by priests and nuns in the Catholic Church. In a very strong speech, delivered in the hall of Dublin Castle on Saturday the 25th, Varadkar demanded “actions, not words” from Francis to confront the scandals of abuse and power within the clergy. After this meeting, Pope Francis wrote a letter in which he apologized for the pain suffered by the victims and said that lay Catholics must be involved in efforts to eliminate abuse and its cover-up. However, just a few hours later, at a press conference, he responded to a question about what parents should do if their children showed “homosexual tendencies.”
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But toward the end of the visit, shortly before boarding the plane, an explosive letter from the former Vatican nuncio to the United States was released, accusing Francis of covering up the sexual abuse perpetrated by the former archbishop of Washington. The eleven-page letter, written by Carlo Maria Viganò, asserts that the pontiff had known about the sexual abuse allegations against Cardinal Theodore McCarrick since 2013. From the plane, Francis declined to answer questions on the matter but did respond to a journalist who asked him what parents should do if their children showed "homosexual tendencies."
[READ ALSO: This is how the Chilean LGBTI community welcomed Pope Francis]
“I would tell them, first of all, to pray, not to condemn, to dialogue, to understand, to give space to their son or daughter,” the Pope responded. He added: “When this manifests itself in childhood, there are many things that can be done through psychiatry to see what the situation is. It’s another matter when this manifests itself after the age of 20,” said Jorge Bergoglio. “I will never say that silence is a remedy. Ignoring your son or daughter with homosexual tendencies is a failing of fatherhood or motherhood,” reported the EFE news agency.
Once again: homosexuality is not curable, it is not an illness
His words caused an immediate uproar, and numerous LGBT organizations came out to condemn him. Since 1990, the World Health Organization has removed homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses, and this year it also removed transsexuality from the list.
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